A topological construction for all two-row Springer varieties (Q657374)

Springer varieties are certain subvarieties of the variety of full flags of \(\mathbb C^n\) that appear in several settings, including geometric representation theory and, more recently, knot theory. The structure of those varieties is not well understood, in particular for some classes of Springer varieties the topology of individual components and their intersection is not known. This paper generalizes the work of Khovanov on \((m,m)\) Springer varieties to \((k,n-k)\) varieties, where the index denotes a partition of \(n\) into two sets, that are the sizes of the Jordan blocks of the parabolic subgroups involved in the definition of Springer varieties. In particular the topological type of those varieties is obtained (namely, up to homeomorphism, which may differ from the algebraic classification). Furthermore, a basis for their homology is computed by using diagrammatic constructions. The so called Springer representation of the symmetric group is described by using this basis. Finally, a skein theoretic formulation of the Springer representation is given.